Delhi: Two-month-old baby mauled to death by dog

A two-month-old baby girl was mauled to death by a street dog in Old Delhi's Nabi Karim area on Thursday. The dog attacked the child when she was left unattended for a while by her mother who had left the house to fetch her neighbor.

Baby Sagun was accompanied by her mother, Renu Goswami and her two siblings to her maternal grandparents' home in Nabi Karim after her father, Anil Goswami and relatives had left the city for pilgrimage on Sunday. It was on Thursday night around 9:30 when Renu had left her daughter to sleep in their third floor room that a stray dog entered the house and brutally shred the baby to pieces.

"I was occupied with a lot of work so I had gone to call the neighbor to sit with the baby till I finished the household chores. When we were climbing the stairs I heard the baby scream and we saw a dog descend the stairs," said Renu in tears.

The narrow lane where the incident happened is home to many butcher shops and this becomes a reason for stray dogs to openly roam around in the locality. These also act as a deterrent for municipal bodies to round them up.

Renu had gone to call her 10-year-old neighbour Seetu Yogi who was the first to see Sagun's bodied soaked in blood. Since the dog was caught halfway before he could escape the spot. In the moment of panic, the dog also bit little Seetu in her left thigh to flee the spot.

"Since the stairway is so narrow there was no way for me to run away. He bit and tried to attack my aunt by that time I rushed upstairs to find Sagun's body torn to pieces, with blood all around the room," said Seetu.

Neighbours allege that the dog had already mauled two chicks and a rabbit and had also bit around seven people in the locality before he attacked the two-month-old child. Seetu remembers that the black dog had sustained injuries in his tail and had spit blood earlier in the day.

"There is a major problem of stray dogs in the locality. Despite constant complaints to the municipal bodies they do not enter this street and only take away dogs from the main road," said Ashok Sachdeva, who runs a shop in the neighbourhood. He has been bitten by the stray dogs of the locality over three times in two months.

Soon after the incident the dog was also beaten to death by the local residents.